ALSO SHOWING

(PG) Like generations of children before me, including transfixed youngsters at the 1904 premiere of JM Barrie’s stage play Peter Pan; or, The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up, I wholeheartedly believe in fairies. While this fantasy adventure invites our senses on an awfully big adventure, it lands with a dull thud where it matters most: our hearts. It is a visually stunning grand folly, which has been starved of naked human emotion. The haphazard script shoehorns verbal and visual references to Barrie’s text, sometimes with groan-worthy results.Thus when Peter wriggles out of Blackbeard’s clutches, the pirate barks, “So is the boy lost?” and a minion replies, “Yes sir, he is a lost boy.” Joe Wright’s film is lost with him.

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